The world is a very different place for men who walk alone vs women who walk alone.

I am not saying it is better. Sometimes it is far worse for one over the other. But sometimes it can be better too.

For example, I follow a content creator, Seal On Tour. He made a series of videos of himself walking through Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kolkata, etc. Making friends, talking to people, people being kind to him. Some trying to scam him, since that is part of the culture there and how they deal with foreigners.

While Seal was in Afghanistan, he made videos showing these throngs of men and young boys following him everywhere he went. There was not a woman in sight most of the time. When there was, Seal was not allowed to capture her or those women on film.

Sometimes Seal is filming himself. Other times someone else is filming him, and sometimes he is walking with a crew. So we cannot always assume he is totally on his own.

I remember when I started to learn about how women in Afghanistan were not allowed to drive. This was 2001/02/03, somewhere in that time frame.

I wanted nothing more than to go to the Middle East and drive around in a bullet proof bubble car, like the one the Pope has. I wanted to wear the clothes I wear at home, short shorts, skirts, tank tops, and drive the car. I wanted to show the women over there how I was allowed to be free.

I used to believe the meme I saw as a kid. The one where there is a woman in revealing clothing in one panel, and a woman in a hijab in the other. They are both looking at each other, feeling sorry that the other one doesn’t get to be free. Nowadays, I realize THAT was propaganda, most likely from someone supporting or inside the Muslim community. I am free to wear revealing clothing, or to not. I am not being threatened with physical violence if I do not wear revealing clothing. I have not been brainwashed to believe “short shorts or die!” My clothing is a choice I make to express myself, and I get to make that choice. Even if people criticize me, tell me that I am showing too much skin, they aren’t going to stone me in the streets for wearing it. And when I say too much skin, I mean I have about 3 inches of clothing covering my entire body. Not covered head to toe in black and my skirt lifts up above my ankle and now I have to die because I have brought dishonor to Allah.

These are not the two sides of the same coin. But someone used a cartoon to convince entire generations of men and women that it was. It’s not. It wasn’t then. It never was, it never will be.

I wonder today if I could go over to the Middle East and make the same kind of videos Seal does. I wonder if I could show how awesome the people in other countries are to women who walk their streets alone. No male chaperone in sight, wearing whatever will help me battle the cold or the heat. Will they be so kind and friendly to me? Maybe they would even be a bit star struck seeing someone different from them, wanting to follow the person with the camera around if she is a woman and not a man?

My guess is…Maybe? Maybe not? I don’t really know.

However, I do hypothesize that I would have a very different story to tell. Especially while respecting all of the customs. One caveat to this: Seal is Canadian. He has had to state that in more than one of his videos that he is Canadian, not American lol. That’s another variable. But still…

One place I know where we would have a very different story to tell? Aside from Afghanistan? Iran. That is, if US citizens are ever encouraged to visit there again.

Do you know why I know it would be different for me than him, right off the bat? Even if I had never seen anything else, this would tell me that: The Complete Guide to the Dress Code in Iran.

The dress code for foreigners visiting Iran. Half the content on that page is about what women must and cannot wear. There is one miniscule paragraph about how men can dress (casually, jeans/long pants, t-shirts, long sleeve shirts. No shorts, no sleeveless tops. Bathing suits in designated areas only). That’s it. 4 sentences that could really just be one. The rest is a background and history of the way people dress in Iran, and an FAQ section at the bottom.

The world treats men and women differently everyone. That is not something you HAVE to be afraid of. It is something you have to accept, so that you can act accordingly while still living your life on your own terms.

I imagine that this difference in how the world treats men vs women who walk the world alone is part of why I have so many “you might think I’m crazy, maybe I was just being paranoid, but this is the series of events that occurred or is currently occurring” stories.

Women do not typically walk the world alone. Women in America especially do not typically walk into a diner owned and run by Muslim staff without a husband or a friend. They do not typically experience the carelessness, hostility, and subtle behaviors that these men perpetate towards women right off the bat to establish dominance because of that.

I do. I have. I am walking this world alone for as long as I have to. For as long as I get to. For as long as I can.

Women do not typically go to a dance club alone. They always walk in with friends, or run right to the friends they are meeting, or glom onto strangers to make it look like they are not alone.

Women do not typically notice when a random person is standing too close to the drink she left alone. I do.

Women do not consider the very real possibility that opportunistic people see us as targets because they believe no one else will know what happened to us if we disappear, since no one else is around us watch it go down. I do. Every single time I get the sense that something is wrong, that is where my mind goes to first.

I also know I have options on how to keep myself safe. Those options, that training that I receive during Warriors of Light, makes it so that I am not walking around the world paranoid that someone is going to attack me at every single turn. If I did, I would be exhausted. I would be burnt out in a heartbeat. Instead…I am full of life. I am thriving. I am enjoying myself.

I enjoy doing everything alone, practically. It’s not a compulsion that I HAVE to do things alone. What it is is an exercise in free will. You see, I have this condition, where I cannot stand spending a lot of time with people who make everything about themselves.

That condition kind of limits my options in regards to who I can spend a lot of time with each day. Especially if we are supposed to be doing something that is not about them, it is about the group, or the experience, or the view.

Some people, most people I think, believe that how I live my life is sad. Parts of it are sad, sure. I am sad that I don’t own my own house by now. I am sad that I cannot afford a million cars yet, or even own one outright. I am sad that I am not living in a penthouse in New York City, or that I am not married to an amazing man, raising my own family.

But there is not much I can do about that, so how long am I expected to focus on how sad I am about those things? When will society give me permission to believe that my life is awesome?!

And why do I have to wait for society’s approval towards how I feel or think about anything? Isn’t society the problem with everything anyway these days? The reality is it is not, society is actually awesome, but the people in it make it kinda lame.

The point I am making here is that I get to live my life on my terms.

I am not living my whole life based on what other people choose to allow me to enjoy. I don’t wait to go out only when my friends are up for it. I’m not trapped in conversations with boring people. A boring person tries to talk to me for too long and I just become like Max – my cat. I just walk away. And then, if I do that to a hot guy, in 2 seconds flat some woman will be there to comfort him and makin him feel better by saying something like “She shouldn’t have done that to you! What a bitch!” My life is great, because I no longer have to talk to that guy anymore! If being a bitch bought me that freedom, then that is a price I will willingly pay, over and over again .

I get to do that. My sisters trapped at home in Hijabs do not. They are cruel towards us in the West because we are both being taught propaganda that fuels our hatred towards each other, and towards sisters on our own sides. Too many of us don’t even bother questioning it. We glom onto the hatred. That is what I avoid, and therefore I tend to avoid people most of the time. Unless you are coming to me to change, or you are already doing so much work that you are actually above the cruelty of the average human already, and you are on your own path up towards the Light, then there will not be that much for us to talk about, really.

I think Tom Hardy said it best, even though I see this quote being attributed to Megan Fox a lot: “Being alone for a while is dangerous. It’s addicting. Once you see how peaceful it is, you don’t want to deal with people anymore.” That is very true for me. At least, I don’t want to deal with people INSIDE social situations as often. I prefer to just observe and enjoy what the event has to offer.

Listening to music and dancing are usually far more enjoyable than hearing you gossip about Becky at work and complaining about your husband who is at home watching the kids so you can be here complaining about how much he works.

I don’t want to live alone in the mountains in the woods. I love society. I love civilization. I want to be here in the world. But I also don’t feel less than because I don’t have a circle of close friends. Not anymore, anyway. I used to. But not anymore.

The other reason that doing things alone is a super power? I notice *everything*. I get to perceive so much more than people who are engrossed in conversation or worrying about what their friends are talking about as soon as they got up to go to the bathroom.

I believe it is not only a super power to do things alone, it is absolutely NECESSARY to get a grip on what is actually going on in the world today. ESPECIALLY SINCE I PUT MY PHONE AWAY IN ORDER TO BE PRESENT WITH WHERE I AM. That’s a big one, in case you couldn’t tell.

We are living in Ready Player 1/Wall-E times Today. I wish you could all see yourselves, hunched over on your phones, leaning on your kids’ strollers or walking in rows of 5 across at the mall. All looking down. No one looking up. Where are you even going? Why don’t you sit down and do that, and THEN walk to wherever you are going?

The only times I use my phone in public are when I know I have to, or I can. I try to be aware of my surroundings the majority of the time. I look up and around every few seconds to make sure I am not about to walk right into a pole, or collide with someone else doing the same thing as me.

I refuse to be tied to just any man for safety reasons. I know safety does not work that way.

I am waiting for the rest of the female population to figure that out too. You don’t need a man to be safe. Is it nice to have a big, strong, handsome man (or men) around to keep you safe? Of course it is. Life is much easier that way. And I know he enjoys doing that for me too, if he is actually a man.

I know a select few women who already understand this today. Thank Goddess for them. They are the women that I look up to. Not Kim Kardashian, or any of the Kardashians. They are the women of the Modern Mystery School International leadership and administrative team. “Team Power!” as Sovereign Ipsissimus Dave Lanyon referred to them as recently.

I look up to the men of Team Power/the admin and leadership team too, because they teach us how to accept reality for what it really is. That empowers me to live my life well.

I don’t think any of – it is weird to call them my heroes, because that feels too fan-girly for me – my Teachers, the men and women of the Modern Mystery School that I look up to with admiration, I don’t think any of them would endorse me walking the world alone as often as I do.

They also would not admonish me for it either. They would encourage me to do what I believe I must do, or that I want to do, as safely as I possibly can, I think. To do it while standing in my power as a Goddess and as MySelf. Living life safely isn’t always the BEST way either. Sometimes you just want to have fun, journey into the danger zone sometimes. I love that I can do that too.

I was doing things alone before I found the Modern Mystery School. But it was harder then. It wasn’t as much fun.

I received my Life Activation in 2016, right before I attended a 3 day music festival alone. It was called Mysteryland! The two friends I invited didn’t want to go. I bought my ticket anyway because I had a sense that it would be a great time for me, and it absolutely was. Immediately, and for the entire 4 days I was there. I made friends with cool people, mostly men around my age, and a couple of women, and we had an awesome time. The final night we were there, after the concerts were done, we stayed up all night, sitting around a campfire someone had built, and laughing the whole time. That is how I want life to be for everybody. Without the drugs, preferably.

But if it is to be that way, you have to be smart about it. You have to be willing to accept reality. The reality is that some people are just creepers, some are trying to scam you, some are trying to figure out how they can get what they want out of you without getting caught, or how they can get the most out of you with the least amount of effort *cough that bum sleeping on your couch who isn’t paying any rent or contributing any food to the household or anything but is nagging you to do his laundry and the dishes and complaining while he sits on his phone “daytrading” and trying to become instagram famous cough*.

The reality is also that far more people than that just want to have fun. They are genuinely good, kind-hearted, hard-working people with a terrible sense of direction. Even if they are a bit self-centered and annoying to deal with at times, they are not malicious, they are not trying to harm you. Especially in 2026. Social media has turned people into copies of what we watch.

You can tell the kind of content people consume based on how they treat you. That is not because they are bad people, it is because they are lost. There is one small thing that is true about everybody who is like this: They do not know themselves well enough to choose who they are becoming, so social media and everything they consume (tv, music, movies, drugs, alcohol, everything), is doing it for them.

You are too. Aren’t you? How well do you know yourself?

It is time to choose.

Who are you becoming?

How are you doing that?

What are you consuming that will support you in that? If you need help with this, I created a series of journaling prompts to help you get clear on where your life is headed based on what you consume. It starts at Day 0. iammelissareddick.com/365-days-of-journaling

There is one way that the world is not kind. This one has been on my mind a lot.

As I stated in the beginning, the world is different for men vs women. That is why women who are claiming to be men think they feel safer as men until they are alone in the dark at night. The world of men is a challenging place. It is not as kind as it is towards women.

Men are expected to earn their way in this world. Women are too, but the reality is it is a lot different for us. Let’s just accept this as true for the purposes of this post and move on.

If you are a man, or a woman presenting herself as a man so well that other people genuinely question their perception of you, you cannot expect any other man to pick up your slack in life. At all. That is a luxury reserved for women. This is true for all men.

You, as a man, are expected to be responsible for yourself, and one day for your wife, your kids, and everything else. That is why I encourage men to focus on dating and getting wealthy young, rather than making marriage your priority before you can offer your new wife a penthouse of her own if she wants one. When a man, or a woman pretending to be a man, expects another man to do the work that he or she is expected to do, the world is not kind to you.

You may not believe that is true. That is definitely not what social media is telling many of you. Women have no lived experience to compare this to unless you actually listen to and learn from your fathers, uncles, grandfathers, brothers, husbands, male partners, coworkers, and friends. But how many of you are actually doing that?

Not many, I expect. I didn’t for a long time. The feminist movement taught me not to. BLM taught me not to listen to men, especially black men. They called them “Hoteps”.

This is the last thing I will say about this.

The world is different for women than it is for men. It is easier for women, whether we believe that or not. But in some cases, like the ones I have laid out before you this morning, and over the past several years since I started using social media to share, the world is easier for men. Because men fear other men. Men who look like men, anyway. Men who are strong, muscular, not necessarily extremely tall though that helps, but men who are big. Mentally and phyiscally big.

Men do not fear women the same way. They really don’t have a reason to, at least not physically. Unless we have the werewithall to beat them in a fight, which many of us do not. I definitely don’t. Not yet, anyway, and maybe I never will. Only Goddess knows if I am capable of something like that. But men also do not have to fear women in order to respect us. That is how men treat other men.

In order for men to respect us, that comes from us. It comes from within the woman to cultivate respect. Game of Thrones really screwed us up I think when they showed Queen Khaleesi dominating Khal Drogo in order to gain his respect. She was a woman, not a man. Men dominate other men in order to enforce respect. But women are different. We always have been. Always will be. That is why we cultivate the power of using our voice and our body language in ways that “magickally” but not so magically inspire respect.

Are you ready to learn more about how to do that? And to stop this from being a “man’s world” to being a world where everybody belongs? As we are, men, women, children, no one needing surgery to feel better about all the ways “God” (which is not really God) screwed us up?

If you are not today, when will you be? Will you ever be ready for something like that?

For your sake, I hope you will. Because that day is coming soon.